"Feed the Birds"
(Don't see a note? Download Crescendo. It's free)!~Nana~
Emily Elsie Guthrie Barnett Daniel
b. 4-24-10 d. 7-12-96
Here we are...
[Scroll down to the bottom to return to the main page or to get a recipe]
Nana was just 8 years old when her mother, father, and 6 brothers and sisters were ill in bed during the infamous flu epidemic in the winter of 1918. She somehow escaped the disease but this put her in charge of the entire family. She would go out in the snow each day to gather wood to keep the house warm, and cook, feed, clean and care for everyone. She didn't know how to cook very much but was able to make potato soup and broths with verbal guidance from her mother. She did get some help from a neighbor from another farm who would come over in the mornings to milk the cow.
Everyone but her mother eventually recovered. Two years or so earlier she had been gored and tossed up by a cow's horn while helping an ill neighbor milk it in the mornings. Though she lived through the episode, she was never the same.
It was Christmas and her mother was pregnant with her 8th child. She was very ill and knew that pregnant women were not surviving the flu. In labor, and knowing her time was short, she called each child in one by one to tell them good-bye and told them all to stay together. Then she called Nana and her siblings all together to tell them that there was no Santa Claus to be there on Christmas morning, and had them get their Christmas presents to open. As she lay in bed, with Nana's two youngest sisters snuggled on either side of her, she died...Her last words were, "Oh, my poor babies, what will you do?" The baby was stillborn.
Nana's father was a cowboy. He tried to take care of the family, with his mother's help, but she died a few months later. With the time out on the range and a cowboy's pay, there was no way to care for 7 children alone. They would have to be separated to go various family member's homes.
So Nana, a younger brother and a younger sister were placed in Abilene, Texas, with an aunt and uncle who had no children of their own and definite ideas of how children should be raised. They were extremely strict and fanatically religious. (One example of this was, deathly ill right after a difficult surgery, she was forced to get out of bed to attend church). Finally, at age 16 and unable to withstand the stifling pressure any longer, she left, taking her younger brother and sister with her.
She moved to Fort Worth, Texas, and worked two jobs--one at the Worth Theater in the ticket booth, the other at Fair Department Store in the hat department. Sometimes the only meal they would have would be a square of Hershey chocolate bar dissolved in a cup of hot water.
During this time, a young man who was taken with her threatened to commit suicide if she didn't marry him. Extremely naive, and terrified that he would do so, she consented. Suffering from mental problems, he was put in a sanitorium and the marriage was annulled.
Continuing to support her younger brother and sister, they moved to Big Spring, Texas, to be close to another sister who was a foster child with a wealthy family in nearby Garden City. It was there in Big Spring that a young man she had met earlier asked her to marry him. He was Milburn Barnett, a banker and son of a doctor, highly intelligent, caring, and very handsome. She refused, though, being a "marked woman", previously married, in those days a shameful thing which was just not tolerated by proper families. But he persisted, and through his mother's vehement protests, they were married and had two children.
Unfortunately, Milburn had a drop-beat heart and severe migraines, and in those days cocaine and opiates were prescribed for pain relief. He became addicted to drugs and then to alcohol.
He was also severely depressed and attempted suicide a number of times. One day after he had been drinking and made another suicide attempt, Nana said she was leaving. He pulled a gun and threatened to kill them if she did, but she escaped with the children.
Those were the beginning days of Alcoholics Anonymous, and several months earlier Nana had read an advertisement in the paper at which the founder was to speak. She and a friend went to the meeting and were touched with the founder's story and the advice the program uses, not just for the alcoholics themselves, but for the family members, and how to deal with the alcoholic to try to get them to turn around. After she had left Milburn, he pleaded with her to return, but she refused unless he got rid of the guns and went to Alcoholics Anonymous.
He agreed to her terms and she returned to him 6 weeks later. He quit drinking and they moved to Guyman, Oklahoma, where he managed a war-time government trailer park. Tragically, the demons of his depression remained, and, in failing health, the ensuing days and weeks were dark and difficult for him. 2 years after he quit drinking, he mysteriously died by her side in the middle of the night, thought to be from complications from his heart problems and the toll the addictions had taken on him.
And so, widowed shortly after the end of World War II, with two children to support, she continued to manage the trailer park for a while and then remarried, this time to a wealthy man who turned out to be extremely miserly and cruel. She left him and decided then and there she would never remarry.
However, in 1955, after moving back to Fort Worth, where she first ran a boarding house and then became a real estate agent, she met a divorced war veteran, Gerry Daniel, who asked if she would honor him with her company on a date.
Being not nearly so naive now, she asked to see his divorce papers. Surprised at the request, he nonetheless produced them for her, and, equally surprised that he had been honest, agreed to go out with him. After several months he asked her to marry him. She thought about it, then told him she would upon condition: she would not tolerate drinking, jealousy or distrust. If she had somewhere to go, as long as she returned home to him, he was to trust that she was faithful and not demand to know where she was, and she would do the same for him. He agreed, and from their marriage in 1956, until his death of a sudden heart attack in 1973, he was kind to her and faithful to those terms.
Orphaned so young, she was unprepared for her difficult life, but memories of her mother's love and words kept the siblings close. She was also plagued by lifelong health problems. But the events of that life molded her into a wise and caring woman, who cared for and touched everyone she came in contact with.
Even through the last years of her life, in losing her physical independence, and through pain and illness, her mental strength remained a shining example of faith and a person's ability to learn from, rather than succumb to, life's trials. She was loved and respected by everyone that knew her, and she maintained her dignity and sense of humor through it all.
Her family was blessed in being able to take care of her during her last days, and to be with her as she passed from our hands into Our Father's on July 12, 1996. During her last hours she told us she had seen Gerry standing in her doorway, dressed in a beautiful dark suit with golden threads in it, letting her know he was waiting to meet her. And then, just before her death, she said her angel, a little boy, was there to take her to him.
We love you, Nana, and know you are there among the Angels. ~Nana's Cooking~
Nana was famous for being a great cook and the foil of many a diet! She would really try to help, but was so afraid that someone might be hungry that she just couldn't control herself, and the fact that she was such a wonderful cook made it impossible to resist! She told the story of how when she was at school one day, a little girl ate a lemon and discarded the peel on the ground. She waited until no one was looking, then ran over, swept up the lemon peel, and hid behind the school, where she hungrily ate it. She would tell us "that lemon peel tasted SO good!"
So it's understandable she'd have that compulsion to make sure her family never had to feel that need, and you better believe no one did! Feel free to share in one of her favorite recipes, below.
~Return to~
~Entrance~
~Go to~
~Recipe Page~
In order to remain not-for-profit:
Nana's Angels name, page design, and hat/toy/huggie theme
Copyright © 1997 Tamara Adams, All Rights Reserved
animated angel .gif ©Kitty Roach
background courtesy of Lori's WebWorks
This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page
